Wisconsin Voters Head to the Polls Again for Crucial Election
Many voters are understandably fatigued from the lead-up to and aftermath of the consequential 2024 election, but Wisconsin voters have another influential election on the horizon — with national implications.
The April 1 election includes a Wisconsin Supreme Court race that could maintain or end the liberal majority on a court that has decided many voting rights cases, as well as an amendment that could enshrine strict Voter ID requirements into the state constitution.
Meet the Wisconsin Supreme Court Candidates
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is technically nonpartisan, as is the upcoming race for a seat on its bench, but in recent years, it’s become clear who the liberal and conservative justices are and whichever side has the majority will influence decisions accordingly.
The Court currently has a 4-3 liberal majority, and liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley is retiring, so her seat is up in April.
The two candidates running for her seat are Susan Crawford, a liberal judge for the Dane County Circuit Court, and Brad Schimel, a conservative judge for the Waukesha County Circuit and former Republican state attorney general.
Crawford has been endorsed by the four liberal justices on the court, one former liberal justice and 134 other judges, according to her campaign website. Also, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin endorsed Crawford in November.
“Now more than ever, our democracy needs ardent defenders who will stand up for the rule of law and protect our constitutional rights from extreme special interests who seek to politicize our constitution and undermine our freedoms,” Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler said.
He stated that Crawford is just the person for the job: “She has proven through a career of service to Wisconsin as an attorney, prosecutor, and Circuit Court Judge that she will always protect Wisconsinites’ core freedoms.”
On his campaign website, Schimel listed over 60 current and former sheriffs as his endorsements as well as local police and firefighter associations. Also, Wisconsin Congressman Bryan Steil (R) endorsed Schimel, saying that he has the “experience Wisconsin needs on the bench.”
If Crawford wins, the Court would retain its liberal majority until at least 2028 when liberal Justice Rebecca Frank Dullet’s term is up, but if Schimel wins, the Court’s majority would flip.
Wisconsin Supreme Court’s Recent Voting Rights Decisions
In April 2023, Justice Janet Protasiewicz won her state Supreme Court race, transforming the Court’s conservative majority into a liberal one. Since then, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has delivered multiple wins for voting rights.
The Court struck down the state’s unfair legislative maps in December 2023, ruling that they violated the Wisconsin constitution and had to be redrawn for the 2024 elections.
After new maps were approved last February, Wikler said, “[t]he long, dark night of ultra-partisan gerrymandering is over, and a new day for democracy now dawns in the Badger State.”
Then, in June last year, the Court froze part of a lower court’s decision that would’ve significantly limited the number of early voting locations that municipalities could designate for the state’s 2024 elections.
The next month, the Court delivered another victory for voters — ruling to reinstate ballot drop boxes ahead of the 2024 election, overturning a 2022 decision from the court’s then-conservative majority that prohibited them.
Bree Grossi Wilde, executive director of the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School, said since August 2023, the Court “has decided or currently has under advisement several key democracy-related cases.”
She added that the upcoming election “will determine the direction of the court with respect to democracy and other critical cases for at least the next year.”
After the 2025 election, there will be state Supreme Court races every year for the next five years as each justice’s term expires. In 2026 and 2027, conservative justices’ seats will be up.
The Court Race Has National Implications
Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause, explained that multiple factors have led to the national spotlight on the race, including voters desperate to get a pulse on where the country is ideologically after President Donald Trump entered office last month.
“[With] Wisconsin being a swing state, the ideological balance of the court is kind of a national barometer for a lot of people about where things are in the country,” Heck said.
He also noted that since it’s one of the only U.S. elections in April, all eyes are on it. He said this isn’t a new trend either. He said the Wisconsin Supreme Court election two years ago was “the most expensive judicial election in the history of the United States” with over $50 million spent by candidates and special interest groups.
He said national money is already flooding into the race, and recent multi-million dollar donations to the candidates show that this race will be extremely expensive, too.
Wisconsin’s Current, Restrictive Voter ID Requirement
The other major item on the ballot this spring: a voter ID amendment. Wisconsin passed a voter ID requirement in 2011, and Heck said it’s “one of the most extreme and restrictive voter photo ID laws in the country.” The Movement Advancement Project, an independent, nonprofit think tank, categorized it as a “strict” voter ID law.
The law immediately faced litigation from pro-voting groups, like the ACLU and League of Women Voters, but after the legal challenges were ultimately unsuccessful, it was implemented in 2016.
The law only allows certain types of IDs to be used for voting, most notably limiting which kinds of student IDs can be used. Also, unlike some other states, Wisconsin doesn’t allow voters without an ID to sign an affidavit verifying their identity under the penalty of perjury.
Now, Republican legislators seek to enshrine the requirement in the state constitution in the upcoming election. For an amendment to get on the ballot in Wisconsin, two consecutive sessions of state legislatures must pass it.
For this measure specifically, the state Senate and Assembly approved it in November 2023 during the 2023-2024 session and again last month during the 2025-2026 session.
Amendments don’t need approval from the governor, which Heck said is how Republicans were able to avoid a veto from Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.
If this passes, voters won’t notice a change, since the photo ID policy remains in place. However, it will still have a significant impact.
What Happens if the Voter ID Requirement is Constitutionalized?
Right now, the requirement is a law, so a future legislature — perhaps one with a Democratic majority — can pass another law overturning it. If it becomes part of the constitution, then legislators would have to pass another amendment to reverse it.
Also, there are implications for litigation filed against the requirement. Grossi Wilde explained that “avenues for challenging the requirement in state court are far more limited if the requirement is enshrined in the Wisconsin Constitution, rather than in a statute.”
Heck said that Republicans are “somewhat fearful that the progressive four to three majority in the Wisconsin Supreme Court might decide to take up the constitutionality of the voter photo ID law and strike it down.”
He explained that this is one reason GOP legislators pushed for the amendment, but there’s another factor: their shrinking majority in the legislature.
Republicans have “greatly reduced majorities in each chamber because of the fair maps that were put into place in early 2024,” he said.
According to Heck, there are multiple motives behind this amendment, and one of them is to rile up the Republican base with a popular issue — voter ID — and get them to show up to vote in the state Supreme Court race, which typically has lower turnout since it’s an off-year spring election.
“They want to use this as a vehicle to turn out their base and try to inflame voters into somehow thinking that voter fraud will run rampant if this isn’t passed by the voters,” Heck said.
Voter ID is a hot-button issue right now for Republicans. Last month, Trump said that he would withhold aid for the California wildfires unless the state adopted a voter ID requirement.
Heck emphasized the GOP claims about voter fraud being a major issue are not true.
How Photo ID Requirements Negatively Affect Voters
In addition to using this issue to cast doubt on the credibility of election results, Republicans can also cement a voter ID requirement in the state constitution to continue to restrict ballot access for specific voters.
“We believe it does have a disenfranchising impact on certain populations,” said Debra Cronmiller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin. “Since we’ve had the voter ID law, there are people who just cannot access an ID, and they may be eligible voters, and before the ID restriction, they were voting. Now they might not be able to vote.”
According to a survey released in 2024, over 20 million voting-age U.S. citizens don’t have a valid, non-expired driver’s license, and another 28 million have a non-expired license but it doesn’t include their current address and current name.
Cronmiller said it may be difficult for many people to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to obtain or renew their driver’s license, including elderly people, those who don’t drive, people who live in rural areas and don’t have access to public transportation and voters with disabilities.
She also explained that even if voters with disabilities can get to the DMV, they may not be able to get in because “a number of their facilities in the state of Wisconsin are not accessible to persons with mobility issues.”
Also, Heck noted that communities of color, people in urban areas who rely on public transportation and college students are heavily impacted by photo ID requirements, and these groups tend to vote Democratic.
In fact, the 2024 survey revealed that voter ID requirements disproportionately impact people of color, with over a quarter of Black and Hispanic voting-age citizens not having a driver’s license with their current name and/or address compared to only 5% of white counterparts.
“The point is to make it inconvenient for people to be able to vote,” Heck said. “It’s a cynical calculation on the part of the Right to figure out which groups are going to be most impacted by this voter ID law. And [Republicans] said, ‘well, it’s going to hurt the people that would tend to vote Democratic more,’ and that’s why they did it.”
Election Information for Wisconsin Voters
To weigh in on the voter ID amendment, along with the Supreme Court race, Wisconsin voters can participate in the upcoming Feb. 18 primary election and the April 1 general election.
For information about voter registration, absentee ballots, in-person voting or important election deadlines, Wisconsin voters can visit this website.
Notably, for mail-in voters, absentee ballots must be delivered by 8 p.m. on Election Day. Law Forward, a nonprofit pro-democracy law firm in Wisconsin, recommended that voters mail their ballots at least one week before Election Day to ensure they arrive on time. Also, voters can track their ballots here to see when they arrive.
Cronmiller said the most important message she wanted to share with Wisconsin residents is how crucial it is to vote in this election, even though it’s in the spring, which isn’t when people are typically thinking about elections.
“We talk a lot about the will of the people, but if you sit on your hands at home on Election Day, nobody knows what you want. You have to get out and exercise that constitutional right to vote,” Cronmiller said.
Read here to learn about other state Supreme Court races to watch in 2025.